


don't really wanna know what's good for me

by SpineAndSpite



Series: Venus as a Boy [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Boys in Skirts, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 19:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11191497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpineAndSpite/pseuds/SpineAndSpite
Summary: “Come here often?” he half jokes, nervous in a way he hadn’t been when Iwai had menaced him in the back of the airsoft shop.The sake cup is a delicate blue and white, tiny in Iwai’s hand. “Used to. You been working here long?”(Akira dresses up. Iwai stops by.)





	don't really wanna know what's good for me

**Author's Note:**

> i'm offered this delicious buffet of potential ships, and of course i choose the middle-aged man. typical.

He gets a theatrical doubletake the first time, an arched heavily-penciled eyebrow. But all Lala-chan says is, “Don’t wear the heels behind the bar. I don’t want you falling into the wine rack.” She guesses, quite rightly, that Akira doesn’t have much experience in circumstances like this. 

He borrowed the dress from Ann. It’s nothing fancy, just soft pink and white in a vaguely floral pattern. He’s seen her wear it shopping. On her it’s knee-length, and on Akira it hits at mid-thigh. He cuts himself twice shaving his legs. It’s harder than it looks. 

Ann does his makeup, too--dusts his eyes with gold and paints his lips a pale salmon. Morgana sees him and does that little rolly purring laugh. “Wow! You look so weird!” 

“Morgana!” Ann snaps. 

“I didn’t mean in a bad way!” 

“I think you look great,” she says. “I can’t believe we’re almost the same dress size.” 

Akira likes Ann. He’d ask her out if she’d shown any sign she’d be into it. But she always just looks uncomfortable when people make jokes about how close the two of them are. 

“Why are you cross-dressing?” Morgana asks, when Akira changes in the bathroom of the bar before his shift. “Lala-chan said you didn’t have to.” 

Akira checks his makeup in the mirror. He could try to explain how this feels like dressing up far more than a suit or a yukata ever does. It’s the closest he can get to the coat and gloves and mask that peel away the outer layers to reveal the pure, unadorned core. It’s the closest he can get to Joker outside the metaverse. 

He shrugs. “I felt like it.” 

Beyond a few compliments, no one comments. For all they know, Akira could dress like this everyday. Here, he can be anonymous. No one in his daytime life would ever have a reason to come to a place like Crossroads. 

At least, that’s what he thinks, until about halfway through his shift when a smoke-rough voice says, “Hey, Lala-chan. How’s business?” 

Surprise flashes prickly hot over Akira’s skin. His palms tingle. He can taste his heartbeat. 

“Well hey, stranger.” Lala puts on her smoothest voice. “Been an age.” 

“Or two,” says Iwai. 

Akira forces himself to keep his eyes on his work. He’s cutting garnishes for drinks--quartering limes, picking apart sprigs of mint, squeezing lemon juice into a jar. Every so often he’ll have to fish a seed out with the tip of a fingernail. 

“Ever handle a knife much?” Lala had asked him. 

“A couple times, yeah.” 

Akira focuses on not cutting his fingers off. Or rubbernecking like an asshole. A regular sits down in front of him and compliments his dress, and he’s able to focus on her for awhile, listening to her describe her awful day at work, making sympathetic noises. He’s good at this--knowing when people want input and when all they want is an audience. By the time she cashes out, Akira’s heartbeat has settled and he almost feels like himself again. 

But then Iwai takes her empty seat. He isn’t going to just pretend they’re strangers. Akira braces himself for that low sniff of contempt, fear clinging to his insides like chewing gum. 

“Sake,” Iwai says. “Something cheap.” 

“You aren’t supposed to serve drinks!” Morgana hisses from Akira’s bag. 

“Do you go anywhere without that damn cat?” 

Akira grabs a cup from under the bar. Lala is busy at the other end, and it’s not like he’s mixing anything. It’s just opening and pouring. And there’s no risk of Iwai being a cop, so. No harm done. 

“He gets separation anxiety.” Akira pours and leaves the bottle in front of Iwai, who watches his hands while he does it. 

Iwai isn’t dressed up, exactly, but he’s much less casual than when he's at work, in a short black jacket and grey v-neck. His tattoo looks alive in the watery bar lights, like it could scuttle beneath the collar of his shirt. Akira has never seen him without a hat before. 

“Come here often?” he half jokes, nervous in a way he hadn’t been when Iwai had menaced him in the back of the airsoft shop. 

The sake cup is delicate blue and white china, and it doesn't look like it belongs in Iwai's hand. “Used to. You been working here long?” 

Akira shrugs. “A little while.” 

“I guess I’m not the only business owner you moonlight for.” 

“Jealous?” It comes out before he remembers who he’s talking to. That’s the sort of cheeky Akira would get with Ryuji or Ann, not with a laconic ex-thug with a fondness for weapons and half the Tokyo underworld on speed-dial. Who apparently spends his evenings in gay dive bars. 

He’s watching Akira differently here than he does at the shop--looking just to look. Here...maybe it’s the dress. It makes Akira feel different, so every interaction does too.

He smiles with one side of his mouth. “Almost didn’t recognize you without the glasses.” 

“Almost didn’t recognize you without the hat,” Akira volleys back, although that’s a lie. 

Iwai puts a hand to his head, fingers creeping through his hair. It’s an oddly self-conscious gesture, hesitant. Everything he does in the shop is so deliberate. Akira wonders what other quirks emerge when he isn’t working. 

Iwai doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t pull out his phone. He just sits and drinks, and looks. The weight of his gaze prickles between Akira’s shoulder blades. He finishes his sake, pays, and leaves, calling a quiet goodbye to Lala. Akira gets the feeling he’d been waiting for something that hadn’t happened. 

Akira stays until close tonight; there’s no classes tomorrow and he could use the cash. He washes dishes while Lala smokes and counts the till. 

“How do you know Iwai-san?” he asks. He’s tired and fuzzy and it makes him reckless. 

Lala breathes out a plume of smoke and ashes into an empty beer bottle. “Him? We went to the same high school. And back when he had his last job--." She nudges the word enough for Akira to catch on if he knows what she means but not enough to rouse suspicious if he doesn’t. “He used to crash here when he needed to stay off the streets for awhile. Why? You interested in him?” 

Akira’s ears burn. “I work for him part time.” 

“You could do a lot worse.” Lala is shuffling receipts around. “If you’re looking for a sugar daddy, I mean.” 

Akira’s ears catch _fire_. “I’m not.” 

She shrugs. “All I’m saying is, you could do worse.” 

The next day Akira isn’t sure what to expect, but as soon as the sun goes down his phone chirps, Iwai’s avatar popping up beside his message: “Need you tonight.” 

His greetings are never requests. They’re demands. It’s Akira’s prerogative whether he follows them, of course, but tonight a convulsive tug grows inside him that makes it hard to resist. Part of it is his connection to the Velvet Room, the power that seethes in his blood and forges weapons from bonds. But part of it is certainly the way Iwai had looked at him while he poured the sake. How he’d spent all night aware of his silent attention. 

Akira has homework and could definitely use a trip to the bathhouse. He’s running low on lockpicks. But he ends up in Shibuya anyway. 

From the emphatic message, he’s expecting another shady assignment, but Akira ends up just dusting and shifting stock. Iwai sits at the counter and goes over accounts. Akira simmers in anticlimax, although he isn’t sure what he’d been expecting. 

At the end of his shift he gets his usual pay, and Iwai’s eyes don’t linger any longer than they have to. He isn’t avoiding Akira’s gaze either; it’s just his usual brusqueness. 

“Hey.” Iwai calls Akira back when he’s a step from the door. A brown paper bag has appeared on the counter beside him. “Got something I need you to hang onto for a couple days.” 

“Okay,” Akira says slowly. 

“Is it drugs?!” Morgana squeaks from his bag. Akira jostles it against his hip to shut him up. 

“What do you want me to do with it?” 

Iwai gives him an arch look from under his hat. “Hang onto it,” he says again. “And don’t open it.” 

\--

“So.” Morgana scratches at an ear. “We opening it?” 

Akira tosses the bag onto the bed and then tosses himself after it, because of course they are. This package is light and flimsy--definitely not a gun. An _Untouchable_ business card falls out as he unwraps it. 

“He has _business cards_?” Morgana snorts. 

“So what? So do we." 

“We have _calling cards!_. It's totally different." 

Akira flips the card over to find a message written in neat black ink. _One day that curiosity of yours is going to get you into hot water. Until then, this is really more your color._

“He knew we’d open it! Crafty bastard.” Morgana bats at the bag with a paw, knocking it over and spilling out something fluid and shimmering. It pools on the bed. 

It’s a dress. Deep crimson and liquidy-soft beneath Akira’s fingertips. He isn’t an expert, but it looks expensive. It also looks like it’ll fit him better than Ann’s loaner. 

“Wow!” Morgana says. “Do you think he wants to be your boyfriend or something?” 

Akira’s face is definitely as red as the dress, but Iwai’s right. It really is his color.


End file.
